Sigi – A Fart for Melusina review for PS Vita, PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Platform: PS Vita
Also On: PS4, Switch, PC, Xbox One
Publisher: Sometimes You
Developer: Sometimes You/pixel.lu
Medium: Digital
Players: 1
Online: No
ESRB: T

Someone needs to sit the folks at pixel.lu and Sometimes You down and explain the concept of ?balance? to them, because judging from Sigi, it seems like it?s something of which they are entirely unaware.

I mean that in all seriousness. I?ve played games with difficulty spikes, but Sigi might just put all of them to shame in terms of how vast the gulf is between its regular levels and its boss fights. The game is set up so that you encounter a boss every fifth level; you?re likely to fly easily through the first four levels, only to run into a brick wall at the fifth, as lose all your lives and find yourself right back at the beginning before you know what?s hit you. It doesn?t matter that the easy levels are set up so that you can stock up on lives — you?re just going to lose them all anyway.

Mind you, if it weren?t for the difficulty spikes, we?d probably be talking about how easy the aforementioned regular levels are. Outside of the boss fights, Sigi is a pretty unremarkable retro-influenced 2D platformer in which you play as a knight fighting off all kinds of monsters as he tries to save the love of his life, a mermaid named Melusina.

Mind you, it may actually be a good thing that Sigi gets people to focus on its difficulty spikes, because otherwise they might notice how incredibly juvenile it is. The game?s full name, after all, is Sigi – A Fart for Melusina, and, as you might expect, there?s flatulence in abundance. If you?re the kind of person who titters at, uh, tooting, then this may be your thing, but if you aren?t, you?ll probably find it all a little stupid.

That, however, is assuming you?re able to look past the difficulty spikes, and Sigi – A Fart for Melusina isn?t designed in a way to make you do that. Beneath its sophomoric sense of humour lies a game that wants nothing more than to crush your spirit, and giving the insane balancing issues, it?s kind of hard to see why you?d let it.

Sometimes You provided us with a Sigi – A Fart for Melusina PS Vita code for review purposes.

Grade: C-